In the latest Update Pack to Linux Mint Debian (UP4) released in March, MATE 1.2 and Cinnamon 1.4 were made available as well as an option called “gnome2-frozen” which allowed users to stick to Gnome 2 and skip the Update Pack altogether.

Moving forward and in preparation for Update Pack 5, this repository is now discontinued.

An rsync archive was made available for users and mirrors interested in acquiring a copy of the content of Update Pack 3. This archive will remain open for a couple of weeks and is available at the following address:

rsync://debian.linuxmint.com::gnome2-frozen

This is our last goodbye to Gnome 2, a desktop we enjoyed working with since 2006 and which we can unfortunately no longer provide. Although there are still a few technologies which weren’t ported to newer desktops, we’re really proud of the work done by the MATE team and the results we’re getting with Cinnamon. Desktops like KDE and Xfce have also matured a lot and new solutions such as Shell and Unity provide additional alternatives to users.

The loss of Gnome 2 was a traumatic experience not only for users but for desktop distributions. Most of our focus in Linux Mint 12 and Linux Mint 13 went towards making this transition as smooth as possible. With Linux Mint 14 we’ll see the focus switch back towards iterative development/innovations and incremental improvements. Cinnamon will continue to improve and gain momentum but the focus will switch back to developing tools and improving the Linux Mint desktop experience itself, across all editions.

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89 Responses to “LMDE’s “gnome2-frozen” repository discontinued”

Mircrosoft did not learn when they first began to change their UI. People revolted. I think you guys started with something that was familiar to Linux desktop users, and now you remove it. Where is the choice. Gnome was simple, excellent in the way it operated, and now you remove it. I can see this back firing on you. I will stick with U.E. 3.4.. there you have choices.

Edit by Clem: Kevin, U.E provides the same desktops, including the one we develop (Cinnamon), but not the one you describe (Gnome 2 which is now called MATE). We’re talking about a frozen repository here that was yet another choice made available to LMDE users at the time of UP4. I’m sure U.E is a great distribution and there’s probably many reasons to promote it but this isn’t one of them. As for Gnome 2 being no longer an option, this is a consequence of Gnome 2 conflicting with Gnome 3. The GNOME project started a new desktop and gave it the same name as the previous one… this made both desktops not only conflict with each others on Linux systems but also package-wise within repositories. To explain it bluntly, what GNOME did with Gnome 3, is make it close to impossible for people to run Gnome 2 and for distributions to provide it. If you miss Gnome 2, you’ve got MATE to thank and all the people who continue to promote it.

‘Tempora mutantur…’ is true in this case. Gnome 2 served us well, but development skills and the needs of the users have changed and new tools are required. Mate is an option for those who find it hard to let go, but Cinnamon is improving at pace and we -must- both embrace and plan for the future.

To go further, the GNOME developers are doing everything in their power to prevent people from altering their desktop to suit their needs, going as far as to make any updates be backwards incompatible.

Gnome 2 was nice and all, but with MATE around, this isn’t much of a loss. I just wish less window managers required compositing (or xrandr could support multiple GPUs) so I could try out things like Cinnamon on my desktop… Until then (or I replace the GPUs), MATE it is.

MATE is a great replacement for Gnome 2. I have Mint 13 MATE installed on 3 of my computers. I tried Cinnamon, but it was too buggy with the onboard ATI Raedon 3000 graphics in my Shuttle desktop system. MATE works just fine though. Thank you Mint for providing better alternatives to that unpopular Unity desktop. I do have one good thing to say about Unity though. It doesn’t suck as bad as the Metro desktop in that new W8 OS from Redmond.

Aw, Gnome 2 – you were my first and favourite desktop. I started in 2009 on Karmic when Ubuntu was good (because I didn’t know about Mint until my system admin teacher told me about it) and I learned so much from it, and enjoyed using it and now… Goodbye, you’ll be missed :'(

Still, at least it wasn’t abandoned here as quickly as other distros and the gnome developers themselves. So I’m just grateful we had it this long. I plan to switch to MATE when compositioning doesn’t cause extreme video tearing and I can use it as effectively as Gnome 2 – it is a worthwhile project and I’m proud that so many people are working so hard to make it better everyday. Not that I’m trying to be funny, MATE’s great and my only problems come from being VERY fussy – that’s my own fault

Gnome 2 is dead, long live MATE
(as if to say “The Queen is dead, long live the Queen”)

I used to be a Gnome 2 user and I really liked it, but unlike many other users, I got the hung of Gnome shell when Linux MInt 12 MGSE was released, and I left Gnome 2. That is why this news is not that important for me.

Anyway, the MATE guys have done a great work and they’ve got a very nice copy of the old Gnome 2, that is why I understand the reason why Mint guys have decided to discontinue the gnome 2 repository.

Having said that I can’t wait to see the new UP, and I hope is released soon

I was quite surprised to read Evil-K’s comment (Message #3). Do others agree, more or less? Did the GNOME 2 developers leave the organization, in general?

Firefox doesn’t know what to do with rsync; time for me to learn. I’m happy at command prompts, but surely no expert. Many kind thanks for providing this!

What Mint is doing could be considered continuing humanitarianism, although {going off-topic} by no means as extreme as what’s done by MSF:
(English; links to many other national sites)
(France/French)

Sorry, have been involved in other things; Katya/GNOME is still stable and trustworthy. (Although, title bars can disappear or seem to be attached to the wrong window!) I have to do a [metacity replace] (forgot which option) as root now and then. Considering that I’m upgrading to Maya RSN, haven’t filed a bug report.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to trying KDE; I did note that min. RAM was doubled for the release. (I have about 890 MB.) Just possible that the K people have made KDE less of a memory hog. I used KDE in openSUSE (11.1, iirc) for more than a year, and liked it a lot.

“The loss of Gnome 2 was a traumatic experience not only for users but for desktop distributions”,that pretty much nails it: Gnome 2 still is IMHO to date the greatest,most user-friendly desktop environment,and Gnome developers chose to kill it in favor of that unusable,basically useless interface designed after a tablet or cellphone,aptly named by Linus Torvalds “unholy mess”,which Ubuntu promptly followed with its own useless spin-off called Unity.Those folks apparently cannot wrap their heads around the fact that desktop computers still exist and are a different thing altogether,on which such worthless interfaces bring nothing but frustration-thankfully Mate,whilst still being not 100% polished,takes where Gnome 2 leaves and is what I’m using now,although Cinnamon looks interesting too.But really,Gnome 2 being so close to perfection from my point of view,the natural alternative has to be Mate.It’s clear they’ve made a huge mistake with Gnome3/Unity,as outlined by the number of users that are fleeing from Ubuntu and Gnome3 based distros.

Clem, as I understand it, the next update pack for LMDE is essentially upgrading LMDE to Wheezy’s packages and dependencies. As you may know, Debian is not including any version of Compiz on Wheezy, are you planning to release a version of Compiz with the next LMDE update pack?

I love any desktop that can be tweaked as much as one can. Gnome2 is the one and the simplest one and it cooperates with compiz so well. Miss it so much. There is an issue of high cpu usage of Xorg with the combination of compiz and mate. I’m wondering where I can find the solution?

Hi – Loving Cinnamon so far… Is there a timeframe for the update pack 5? A couple of things were broken with update pack 4 on my machine (nothing critical at all) so I’m curious to see if they’ll be rectified when UP5 comes along. Cheers.

It’s been said before, but Mate is what gnome3 should have been. Cinnamon–with it’s forward-looking design and extension architecture–is an important evolution of the desktop.

It doesn’t take much use of Cinnamon to appreciate how the design is making progress towards a desktop that’s more powerful yet more out-of-the-way. It’s UI is not “in your face”. the flow of interaction is smoother. Animation effects are used sparingly–not as bling, but to inform, guide and add value.

Where is all this UI tweaking going? In decades to come, our interaction with computers will be goal-centric. Our means of expressing our goals to computers will go beyond selecting tools through menu choices, setting options, or deciding which side of the display a panel should live,

Computers in the future will contain an ecosystem of task-doers that will communicate with each, manage conflict and self-assemble into sets with the singular purpose of helping people achieve goals. Indeed, the technology has already begun to emerge to do so. Hook-it up to the clouds of thoughts, behavior tracking, memories and communications people generate–and the predictive and organic nature of the system is clear (if personally terrifying to people that have been brought-up without it.)

Linux is very well-suited for creating a goal- and task-centric ecosystem. It was designed and built-out-of small task-centric tools that are routinely assembled into action chains that deliver end-results.

Many thanks again to Clem and the team for giving choice to the people.

I tried to like GNOME for almost 15 years, but GNOME 2 had some “by design” limitations that were incompatible with me. For example, the simple act of sizing columns in the detail view of Nautilus was limited to minimum widths. This limitation was both pointless and insulting. Worst of all, someone actually spent time on programming that limitation. This “limited by design” philosophy was, as I suspected, a sign of things to come.

On the other hand, I think KDE 4 series is a logical and intelligent abstraction of the desktop concept. Mint KDE absolutely rocks.

I think that its a good idea to disable the repo, because people should move on, to XFCE or other environments.
Those who like GNOME 2 – > MATE,
Those who dislike GNOME 3, but want newer technologies -> Cinnamon, Those who dislike GNOME developers new way -> XFCE or LXDE, these projects use plain old GTK too.

This is the first time I am using KDE, It’s really cool. I am using unity from past few years and feel kde is much more intuitive and fresh.I have also used Mint LMDE(Debian edition)and will continute to do it in server space. Mint just add new dimension to to linux distros which is Just amazing.Would love to involved with mint community in testing new releases. IMO one good edition from unity are lenses and and unity web apps(upcoming) does KDE also have apps like this?

I was in the midst of giving GNOME 3 another chance, especially since I’ve discovered some of the tweaks with the GNOME Tweak Tool. In trying to incorporate a different shell theme, I added the GNOME repo, which updated all my GNOME applications. Not only did all my GNOME programs change around, but all the tweaks I had added up until that point no longer worked. It’s also fairly common knowledge that any tweaks created for GNOME 3.2 no longer worked in 3.4, and have been rendered obsolete.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the GNOME developers don’t want people changing their desktop environment.

Gnome 2 was a very basic desktop. Simplistic. Boring. It lacked even basic catering towards people customising for their own use. Compix layed on top, and led to a world where Linux ended up on Youtube, with fun videos showing off a desktop that was vibrant, fun, customisable.

I’ve not considered Gnome 2 a loss really. But Gnome 2 = compiz and the things that made an end user desktop a fun place to go be in – very much so.

I can’t say I am in particular sorry about Gnome 2’s demise. What I will say is however that at least to me, in 2012, I’m not seeing a new thing arrive that in modern 2012 terms creates a vibrant, stellar, customisable interesting, fun end user desktop. I’m seeing everyone create Unity, Metro, Gnome 3 and so on. These are desktops seemingly built by committee, by statistical feedback from the worst groupings to gather feedback from – and simply uniform, tedious desktops designed to make every desktop a ‘product’.

I’ll give kudos to the guys at MATE and Cinnamon for all their work, they clearly see issues with the previously mentioned direction as well. People must realise, and I hope they do so soon, that if a desktop can’t be personal, your place you reside, rigged up in a way you like, with fun and interesting things built in and around it, then – dark days loom for both linux and desktops. Because if its all about a uniform corporate interface, the world will be locked into an Apple/Android/Unity world, it lacks any fun, I don’t see a need to pay towards it, and they will be simply tools in a race to the bottom.

They would also be a signing of doom for Linux and PCs in a more global sense. Why bother if all you get is a shitty enviroment forced on you by some bland, blind, ignorant corporation. You may as well buy the cheapest unit and be done with it. Its not like you can really do anything in such closed dead environments anyway.

So, to finish, the death of Gnome2 isn’t anything to cry about. But to offset that, I hope someone out there is thining about the baseline of a Gnome2/Compiz alike step forward to creat a new enthusiasm that is a timely and technical fit for 2012-onwards.

The concept of a simple, clean interface seems to be lost on most DT developers these days. The end of GNOME 2 was inevitable, as is the case with any technology. The problem is, it’s replacement, GNOME 3, doesn’t provide any improvements, and, in fact, diminishes much of the capabilities which GNOME 2 was known for. I’m glad the the Mint team made strides to lessen the impact of this conversion with MATE and, to a lesser extent, Cinnamon. I only hope they don’t go the way of Ubuntu by devolving the DT into something complicated and unwieldly like Unity, which, I fear, they might.

I liked Gnome2. I have been using Cinnamon and I like it. In LMDE it gives me the ‘Menu’ that regular Gnome3 and Unity took away (I hate searching for my programs, that is one reason I hate Apple.) You guys have done a pretty good job revamping your port of Gnome3, thank you.

Now all I need is a good tutorial (read NOT WHITEPAPER), and a good reference (read summary index) for developing Cinnamon extensions (like the Gnome3 one that removes the recently-used provider) and I think it’ll be all good!

I refugeed from winxp to ubuntu gnome when win7 came out. I’m not one of the gurus here, just a user. I had been playing with pclinuxos but it was too buggy for an stand alone os. My son, a senior sysadmin at rackspace, recommended ubuntu gnome with the older ui. He says guis are like diapers, they just obscure the fact that one lacks full control of his system. He does everything by command line so he’s not much help to me. I really wasn’t comfortable with the newer gnome ui and distro hopped for a while until I tried Mate. It’s just what I need without the gingerbread and lace. Please Clem, don’t neglect Mate. It is the best Linux I’ve tried yet.

After becoming disenchanted with another desktop environment, I became a GNOME 2 user for many years. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. The GNOME folks have decided to corrupt a good concept and moved to a ‘fresh’ mobile-device-type-UI. Go on then…I have been using Xfce for a while now and I’m happy as a clam.

Clem and the Mint Gang (could be the name of a musical group, eh?), you guys keep up the great work…it is very much appreciated!

Time to move on.. Gnome2 still the best for me, so I’ll just make a respin of last Mint with Gnome2 (Katya) myself, that way I can get that ultimate DE installable later, with all updates and all apps I need (yea, I know that katya based on Ubuntu, not Debian).

Right now, KDE is my DE, and unofficial LMDE KDE simply just work on me.
LMDE is good, and with KDE on it, its now great!

I am still running Linux Mint 9. Since LM 9 was released it seems that the Linux Desktop has found itself in some tough issues! For those like me who are windows converts and used to a certain desktop paradigm, Gnome 3 and even KDE 4 is a big move!

While cinnamon is a great innovation, it still does not adequately replace Gnome 2. Mate on the other hand has high potential to become what Gnome 3 should have been! I am a firm believer in incremental changes over time. What KDE 4 and Gnome 3 did were revolutionary and ground shaking!

I have considered LXDE and XFCE, but they still don’t provide the features that I have become accustomed to in Gnome 2. The only other desktop that I have found that I like is the Pear Linux desktop. Now that is the way gnome shell should have been done.

Anyway, I suppose that for me on Linux Mint it will have to be Mate/Cinnamon. While I don’t think Cinnamon is quite there yet, I still like to play with it.

I used Gnome since 2001. Gnome 1 was awful! Gnome 2 was really good and I loved it. When Gnome developers created the mess that’s called Gnome 3, I was done with Gnome. But thanks to Mint, I’ve 2 options: Mate now & Cinnamon in the future when all the bugs are sorted out. Keep up the good work Clem.

It looks as though will be a year or two before the Series 3 kernel and Gnome3 or Ubuntu Unity begin to match the Series 2 kernel and Gnome2’s stability for the new generation of Linux packages, let alone the needs of ‘the Cloud’. LMDE’s more conservative combination using the Series 3 kernel seems quite stable, but it sounds as though that is now ‘being fixed’, so that will probably get worse before it gets better.
Meanwhile LM13 MATE’s Applet selection is poor or flawed and LM13 Cinnamon’s selection is even poorer but seems more stable, once you get past the almost desperate need of both for a better Series 3 kernel etc via Updating.
Adding Cinnamon to LM13 MATE helps, but I have just discovered a new ‘tweak’ that helps, by adding AWN whose different selection of Applets includes CPU Speed Monitoring and Control that actually works, unlike the current MATE situation.
So, if you loved Gnome2, let it Rest In Peace, install LM13 MATE, add Cinnamon and then try adding AWN ?

A PostScript to my last. These postings are from LM13-MATE + Cinnamon + AWN installed on a ’16GB’ EMTEC ‘Orange’ USB2 high speed flash drive, which has been particularly well-matched to trying it all out without risking disrupting my ‘old’ LM9 installation on my PC’s internal hard drive.

Found Linux Mint after being prevented from getting things done in new Ubuntu Unity, GNOME 3, new KDE and Windows 7 desktop. They all copy Apple’s crappy desktop and then all become crappy. They are all new. But being new doesn’t mean more efficient or better. Apple’s desktop wss definitely novel in design but crappy in use. Now everyone seems to have copied Apple’s crap.
Glad Linux Mint has a MATE edition. I’m replacing all my Ubuntus with Linux Mint.

@Bruce R-35 : Hello there, your post seems interesting. Can you further clarify about AWN functioning in Cinnamon (I assume that MATE+CINNAMON+AWN = (means) AWN in Cinnamon). I will be interesting to know the details, if you added AWN at the bottom in Cinnamon(with no panel at the bottom). Except bottom, if you added it anywhere else, please don’nt clarify, as I already tried it and know the result. I have seen the AWN performance in Zorin, so feeling more interesting. Regards.

@bobby-50 : I first tried simply adding AWN to LM13-Cinnamon as a small Right Panel to get display of current application plus CPU Speed/Control and Hardware Sensors including CoreTemp, but that setup didn’t offer MATE’s Weather Report etc, so I instead added Cinnamon to LM13-MATE to obtain MATE’s Bottom Panel with Weather Report and Workspace Switcher etc before adding Cinnamon whose Bottom Panel and different WorkSpace Switcher and Hot Corner Multiview only shows in a Logged-Out/Logged-In Cinnamon Session, just like LMDE.
I only then added AWN as a small Right Panel again, which appears in both MATE or Cinnamon Sessions.
I had to make some other subtle changes to resolve MATE-Cinnamon package differences, but now have my own customisation that’s very close to old Gnome2 capabilities plus new capabilities, Cinnamon’s MultiView being rather useful, and it’s all in just one hybrid installation taking just one Primary partition.
For fater EMTEC USBkey use I have added vm.swappiness=10 at the end of sysctl.conf and it’s proving acceptably responsiveness without actual internal hard drive installation.

There’s a lot of discussion here about which DE is ‘best’, focused on what features are desirable, work or don’t work.

I have a much more fundamental problem – which distro/DE will actually run on my, admittedly old, hardware? My laptop is a ThinkPad T40 with a replacement motherboard from an R51. The Intel 855GM graphics make LM13 with Cinnamon an obvious no-no. LM13 with MATE runs from LiveCD, installs but doesn’t run from the HD – Xorg crashes ‘No screen found’. LMDE with MATE runs, so that’s what I’m using.

So, the point of this rant is – Clem is doing those of us who can’t afford the latest whizzyMATE on XFCE LMDE hardware a great service by providing variants of Linux Mint that work on our machines.

I am an older guy and didn’t have a computer until I was well past 33 years old. I am a simple user, but I love eye-candy now and the configurable things that can make the computer more personalized. I use Cinnamon 13 and KDE 13, I love them both. I like cairo-dock, I also like super boot manager with burg for similar reasons, although I am not using it now after a debacle where I lost grub and needed a long session over my head to get it back in X chat (thanks x chat!) My only problem with KDE is my own inability to understand and deal with the complications of having phonon. This caused me not to be able to record from the webcam with sound. That was very annoying. Putting KDE on top of Cinnamon helped but that was too buggy. So I have Cinnamon on one HD and KDE on another. I am growing more and more fond of Cinnamon and have imagined a Cinnamon KDE where the sound would be easier to handle for folks like me. I also have windows 7 and have tried to make it more like linux mint, but I never find it quite as pleasing as linux mint, so I seldom if ever use windows 7 even though it has no doubt some great things about it. I like to learn, play with things, break things, and try again, and with windows that would be a nightmare, ha. My major point to make here that I didn’t see anyone else make is that even the poorest among us can often afford to make a small regular donation to linux mint. Money isn’t everything but it sure greases the wheels sometimes. I hope that in the future the linux community can work together to supply better options to Google plus, and facebook, which are so highly commercial, and limiting to others who might want to advertise an on line business due to heavy costs. I also think that the fare for children that is safe needs a lot of improvement and although “dou dou” linux has made a stab at this I think it leaves a lot to be desired starting off with how its French name will be received in English speaking countries, ha. I know its a lot to ask but I do dream of linux mint creating a child friendly restricted OS for Kids with a better name. We ask a lot in here and many of us who are simple users contribute very little, thanks for the tolerance! Especially I’d like to thank the tolerance from the x chat people who deal with those of us who try to Google things but have next to no clue what to “google”.

@Bruce R-52 : Thanks for clarifying. I don’nt think I will be able to do all the stuff you said, but definitely I will try it, and after trying, I am gon’na sit quitely…….. simply because failures are not shared.

Anyway, installing an OS on pen drive and running the full OS from there without any problem. Its simply great. Regards.

I have had Gnome 2 ever since Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). There will never be anything like Gnome 2 (except maybe Xfce). Microsoft ruined Windows after XP (Windows 8/”Metro” anyone?), and Canonical did the same with Unity, as did the Gnome devs with Gnome 3. Linux Mint “Mate” is ok (it is now my main distro, next to Xubuntu), but it is not Gnome 2… How I miss Gnome 2.

I just burned Maya and am running it in live mode. It is a GREAT LOOKING & RESPONDING OS. It just doesn’t open and run the stuff I want it to. This is the 4th Mint version I’ve downloaded in as many years.

I am 77, a Linux enthusiast (for 10 years), a complete software DUMMY, although I build my own boxes. Linux will rule in another decade. It has only been since Eric Raymond launched SuperOS that Linux is usefull for the 99% that don’t know code. I have NEVER been able to see why the linux community doesn’t get it. We need a system that will run stuff right after it is installed.

Yes, I see the EASY software install lists in the new distros. I don’t EVEN know wtf to pick to install. I’ve tried.

Right now, the 2 guys that get it are Artyom Zorin and Ikey Doherty.

I, for the life of me, will never understand why Shuttleworth doesn’t get it.

“With Linux Mint 14 we’ll see the focus switch back towards iterative development/innovations and incremental improvements. Cinnamon will continue to improve and gain momentum but the focus will switch back to developing tools and improving the Linux Mint desktop experience itself, across all editions.”

donors and sponsors posts discontinued also? again? Are you forgetting again, Clement?
Can you not see how the amount donated keeps dropping? Why dont you focus your energy and sdo something about it? REGULARLY (emphasis on purpose) publishing those donor lists is is the least you can do and it takes a few minutes…

If only Gnome 3 were better than Gnome 2. The developers needed to “develop” Gnome but did’nt have a clue as to how to improve it. Since they did not have anyone sensible around to give them some ideas about anything useful to add to it, they decided instead to remove things from it. No other choice i guess. They needed to do something this was something – and so they did it. Its really rather sad. Like Unity. As if two pieces of crap are b etter than one. ‘Fraid not.

Well, i hate the new gnome and how it slow my work. I don’t mean Gnome is slow in a CPU way (well, it is), but it is probably more an OS for computers like tablets than real Desktops.

Honestly, i need to much time to do the same thing, now.

Then I tried XFCE, but the window manager is REALLY to unstable.

Now I try LXDE. CPU-wise, it’s really, really fast. I’m happy : I have a powerful computer and, you see, with LXDE, all its power go in my app needs.
Okay, there are still some littles problems with OpenBox on dual screen (interactions between task bar and maximize buttons on the second screen, even if you put the task bar only on the first screen), but nothing like the bugs on Gnome 3.

KDE 4.9 is starting to become OK.
Cinnamon really promises to be a saviour, if ever includes a 2 panel layout mode like GNOME 2 was.
MATE will hardly succeed if no huge developers come in the way.
UNITY will be OK in Ubuntu.
GNOME Shell is doomed.
XFCE, LXDE and others will be always the tail, never the head.

Considering that MATE is essentially GNOME 2, I’m not going to miss it terribly. How will users who’ve skipped MATE and Cinnamon in LMDE be updated for UP5? Will the next “release” have separate MATE and Cinnamon ISOs? GNOME 2 will probably be update to MATE, I presume?

I loved gnome shell from the start! Way to Brake away from the bland windows look. Its funny the Linux community is all about the choice to not use windows but every time a developer strays from the windows cookie cutter drawer theres a backlash.

I jumped on LMDE as soon as it was available and I’ve been on the frozen gnome 2 DE for a while now. It’s been slow going watching the YouTube vids and reading the docs, but I’m going to try Arch and see where that goes. LMDE got me hooked on the rolling-release concept.

I think Linux Mint should focus 100% development efforts on a really polished LMDE version only and stop creating new versions every 3-4 months based off of Ubuntu. Having to re-install each time isn’t my idea of fun.

If Linux Mint ever creates a nice rolling-release mobile version for the HP Touchpad…I’m on it.

‘Hopefully, Cr-Apple and M$ never catch on to the rolling-release concept’ as if… there wouldn’t be any cow to milk so no worries there; they need huge income boosts at well determined time intervals(new shiny OS is released ‘u ain’t cool if u don’t order it now’) it would be counter productive to theyr pockets to have a rolling release instead of chucking a crappy OS(but ever more eye candy and efectz loaded) every few months and then watch morons squirm as theyr older os nears its life cycle end and so the users get left standing in a shower of mallware/exploits for witch no more patches will be coming…

Further to Comments 52,53 and 58, some bad news about new EMTEC ’16GB’ C400 Orange Flashdrives.
Emulating the unfortunate Unity / Gnome3 trend to ‘fix what ain’t broke’ they now have less capacity (14.45GiB instead of 14.92 GiB), are slower (26/7 MB/s instead of 32/10 MB/s Read/Write times) and are far less compatible than their older versions, although their new design is more tactile.
So if you want to try installing LinuxMint on a USB Flashdrive, try using Lexar (or licensed Kodak) USB Flashdrives instead.
Or better yet, install to a Western Digital My Passport Essentials 500GB USB 2/3 hard drive that takes about as much USB2 or USB3 port 5V power as a USB Flashdrive, but is at least twice as fast and also far more compatible.

Is mintMenu upstreamed to Debian or MATE? Or does it remain a Mint-specific application?

Edit by Clem: It’s a mint-specific MATE applet. xfce-xfapplet-plugin is specific to Mint in its present implementation (which is compatible with MATE) but it should find its way upstream into Xfce itself.

Actually, Mint Main Edition is based on the same 6 month Ubuntu release schedule–I believe. Besides, who says you have to upgrade every time a new release comes out? LM13 is fully supported for 5 years as of it’s release date. Unless you have some piece of hardware that is not supported in LM13, what would be the practical benefit of upgrading to LM14 when it hits? Even if you wanted better hardware support, you can still upgrade the kernel pretty easily, and it just might support that hardware.

Some users are still on LM9, and there ain’t a thing wrong with that. It’s supported until April 2013. I was on it until about a month ago, and sometimes I still miss it. So far, LM9 has been the absolute best experience for me, but I figured it was time to bite the bullet and get into the new LTS release, and hang out there for awhile–at least until the next LTS gets released.

I see the benefit of rolling release for sure, especially since Clem has built somewhat of a hybrid out of it. But it’s not for everybody just yet. Therein lies one of the greater values of the Mint team.
What works well for one user might be a bit of a headache for another, so good, viable options are made available. That being said, it seems more appropriate that Clem put 100% into the overall vision of Mint, whether we completely agree with it or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of LMDE, and it has progressed well, but it needs to be substantially better than the main edition, and for me personally–all pros and cons of both platforms completely weighed out–the current Main Edition has the edge. Again, that is my experience, and I am not forcing that on anyone else.

As Kevin Maher said in post #1, I still can’t understand why Clem needs to integrate Gnome 3 at all. Just use Gnome 2 which we all like. That is unless Clem has had enough of having Mint as a success. When I build a computer, I use known good products not only new ones just because they are new. Surely it’s the same with a distro?

A PostScript to Comment 78. The new style EMTEC ‘Orange 16GB’ USB stick is indeed a bit of a disaster, but the new style EMTEC ‘Blue 32GB’ stick is quite another story, being truly high speed USB2 (16/15 MB/s Read/Write) and far more compatible.
This Postscript is from an LM13 hybrid MATE+Cinnamon+AWN installation that is effectively ‘LMDE Plus’ in a 12GiB ext4 partition on just such a stick.
Using vm.swappiness=5, it’s then acceptably responsive and easily transported, whilst still leaving room for a 16.86GiB ‘public’ data FAT32 partition !

“O, a nice looking car (for the first view). But, excuse me … where is the steering wheel?”

Silence.

“Hello? HELLO??? Someone’s here?”

The answer, very distinctive: “This is THE GNOME THREE CAR. Everything is optimized for you and for everyone. Drive straight.”

“But the roads aren’t straight, what shall I do if I need to follow a road in a curve?”

“For old and foreign roads which are not compatible with Gnome 3 you will need a steering wheel plugin, there might be some, somewhere. But you have to find and to install it by your own, we don’t do that. And we don’t support it, too. And in the next Gnome subsubsubsubversion, which is installed automatically if you come back for a service – you must come, otherwise the Gnome 3 car stops driving -, all of your private installed plugins will be removed, comment-less.”

Old ideas aren’t bad only because they are somehow old. Old things are well crafted, often tested and in most cases very stable and very useful. ‘Inventions’ and ‘Improvements’ are not bad as an idea, it depends on how they are realized: In these days in many cases – as Gnome 3 – they are nothing else then a public beta (gamma?) testing call. And what to do if there are not enough testers? Easy solution: ‘discontinuing’ the regular service!

Or, coming to the question of desktop or laptop systems with mouse and keyboard vs. smeary (mobile) pads: As long as productive systems with keyboard and mouse will remain the absolute majority, which is the fact for at least the next 10 years, it does not make any sense to compel people to grease their monitors or having to move their mouse five times more often in each edge of the desktop for opening a single menu!

These letters may look new because you may use a modern font, but the Roman Alphabet and it’s Greek predecessor are more than 2000 years old. OK, in the beginning, the Romans chiseled ONLYCAPITALSWITHOUTSPACES in the stones, because those few, who could read, understood the words also without spaces. But the next generation didn’t removed the “A” for inventing the space, and the following guys didn’t removed the capital letters for inventing the lower ones, and those who invented more and more detailed interpunctuation didn’t removed the dot for showing the end of a paragraph nor anything else (until the neue deutsche gebrauchs rächt schreibunk, which is another topic). Even with the – some day very VERY new – upcoming Arabic number letters the Roman Number Letters aren’t removed from the Alphabet. This is real invention: Adding practical things, but never remove useful elder things without a really need for doing this. Was there any need for fixing to boring white-grey-black colors? Was there any need for removing the freedom of having as much panels as wished? Was there any need to restrict the number of terminals to ONE? Was there any need to remove hotkeys, panel plugins, menus, window control buttons, …, …, …? No. They tried to reinvent the wheel, but they still search for an axis.

Gnome 2 has been killed. But Gnome 3 and all the wm’s, which copy the gnome 3 way, will die too: they will drown in their huge amount of playground-like gimmicks (and some nice but not well implemented ideas), and because they are and their programmers want to have them remaining unusable, unstable, uncustomizable, they will die. And the worst consequence is: For trying to heal (or to revitalize?) Gnome 3, obviously the developers stopped working on some central (gnome) programs like evolution, which needs much more manpower for being debugged because of its many many MANY bugs and problems: Surface instead of content.

I’m sorrowful for Gnome 2 and the many people who worked hard for it to come up and now are thrown away because they don’t run with the self inventing modernists (in the dead end). Not cinnamon nor mate nor KDE nor XFCE nor anything else then Gnome 2 is able to replace the comfort, the look and feel, the structure, the menus, the customizability of Gnome 2. All these wm’s have their own advantages (and disadvantages), but they are not a real alternative to Gnome 2.

Edit by Clem: It’s not planned for release yet. There’s enough content for a new release that’s for sure but we’re still adding more and we’ll have to feature freeze and make the branch mature before 1.6 is out. Whatever happens this will happen before November this year (since we’ll require Cinnamon 1.6 to be ready in time for Mint 14), but it could also happen before.